Hard Brexit would mean patients waiting years for new drugs – report

A hard Brexit would lead to the loss of scientific funding for the UK drug industry and would mean patients waiting much longer for life-changing medicines, a thinktank has warned.

The report by the Public Policy Projects notes that patients, taxpayers and drugmakers benefit from a shared clinical trials and drug approvals process between the UK and the EU. This would be lost under a hard Brexit, which could mean years of delays before vital new drugs come on to the UK market – and £144bn of lost sales for the UK life sciences industry by 2020. A hard Brexit would mean the UK having no access to the single market.

Stephen Dorrell, a former Tory health secretary who heads the thinktank, said the government must be equally focused on Brexit’s implications for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries as it was on banking and the car industry. Life sciences contribute £60bn a year to the UK economy and employ 220,000 people.

Dorrell, who also chairs the NHS Confederation, warned that a hard Brexit would “take ourselves out of the scientific mainstream and thereby undermine the vitality of the British life sciences”. The UK life sciences, which David Cameron described as a “jewel in the crown”, risked being demoted to a “second-tier player”, Dorrell added.

The report, backed by healthcare consulting firm QuintilesIMS, argues that access to the single market is vital for drugmakers, ensuring free movement of scientists and preventing a brain drain. It says students should be taken out of the migration count.

Theresa May’s government has promised to make good the loss of the €8.8bn (£7.9bn) in scientific funding the UK received from the EU last year. But Dorrell said it was just as important to ensure that UK science remained at the heart of the European scientific community.

Luke Tryl, author of the report, said: “If we were to put [UK research and development] at risk, that would be highly reckless.”

The pro-EU group Scientists for EU says it knows of 41 foreign researchers who have refused to take UK posts or are thinking of refusing because of the Brexit vote, and of 100 who have already left or are planning to leave Britain. There have also been incidents of British scientists being dropped from EU projects owing to funding concerns.

The report highlights the importance of regulatory alignment. Tryl said if UK drugmakers were forced to choose between launching medicines in the UK and the EU, they would choose the latter market with its 500 million consumers rather than the former with its 60 million. The report points to Switzerland, noting that the Swiss authorisation agency works closely with the European Medicines Agency under mutual recognition agreements.

Another blow would come from pharmaceutical companies relocating. Japan’s drugmakers – at least 18 have R&D operations in the UK – have already warned they would move to wherever the EMA, currently based in London, relocates.

But UK companies GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca are pushing ahead with investment plans despite the Brexit vote, and US biotech firm Alnylam said in September that it would base its European drug development team in Berkshire.